Disk clean-up program locked up

I tried to clean up my c drive using the disk cleanup tool in xp. The option on which drive to cleanup was not offered, instead, a popup showing that the utility was starting to compress the old files was shown with 3 activity bars present. The bar was froze up from the start and after 45 min. of no activity, I closed it. Also, the cooling fan has started running alll the time, which never happened before this time.

 

I have a Dimension 8200 with windows xp home . Thanks for any help.